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Beef a LA Mode

A roasted beef stuffed with breadcrumbs, onions, spices, and pork fat, baked in water and served with optional catsup or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash and wipe the beef.

  2. Remove the bone.

  3. Make a dressing with bread crumbs, minced onion, salt, and pepper.

  4. Fill the cavity where the bone was with the dressing.

  5. Make deep gashes in the meat.

  6. Insert strips of fat pork rolled in ground spices, salt, and pepper into the gashes.

  7. Tie the beef with a strong cotton strip to maintain its shape.

  8. Sprinkle mixed spices over the top of the beef before cooking.

Bake and baste

  1. Place the beef in a baking pan with ½ gallon of water.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for five hours.

  3. Baste frequently with a mixture of butter and flour in the water.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. When done, remove the beef.

  2. Add tomato or walnut catsup, or wine to the gravy.

  3. Boil briefly and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable after long, slow baking.
Fat pork
Adds fat and moisture to the lean beef as it melts during the long bake.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and onion flavor in the dressing, keeping the stuffing moist and binding it.
Butter
Enriches the basting liquid, adding richness and promoting browning on the surface.
Flour
Thickens the basting liquid so it forms a body for the gravy.

The step that matters

Baste frequently with butter and flour in the water. Regular basting keeps the surface from drying during five hours of baking, while the flour and butter thicken and enrich the pan liquid into gravy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, onion, pepper, pork, nutmeg, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, onion, pepper, pork, nutmeg, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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